Anton O’Donnell spills the beans on hooking up with his American-based label and on the joys of being a true roving troubadour.
Glasgow-based singer-songwriter Anton O’Donnell was the winner of AUK’s first ever Twang Factor back in 2020. Fashioned to showcase “new, unknown and emerging artists,” the inaugural series of the Twang Factor just snuck under the net before Covid shut everything down, including O’Donnell’s chance to capitalise on his success. At that point, his band, Anton & The Colts, had split up and he was just setting out on a solo career, a career which was soon to get a boost when an American record producer, Brian Brinkerhoff, heard one of his songs. This led to O’Donnell releasing a solo album “Tomber Sur PRW“ on Brinkerfoff’s label Need To Know Records. Fresh from the album launch gig Anton O’Donnell spoke to Americana UK’s Paul Kerr.
Hi there, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. First off, how did the launch party for Tomber Sur PRW go?
Overall it was a great night. We had support from James Edwyn & The Borrowed Band and they were fantastic. However, I expected to do an extended set, longer than my usual shows as I wanted to play the album and then do some songs that I rarely play live with a band but the venue’s curfew came earlier than they had led me to believe. Basically, they shut me down so I didn’t get to do the last song in the set ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ which I really wanted to sing as it featured on my EP “Where Art Thou April” which was the inspiration for the album. I wasn’t happy at all.
Can you tell us how you came to be signed to Need To Know Records?
That was not long after I won your Twang Factor award. It gave me a bit of traction but of course, the pandemic happened so I wasn’t able to build on that. However just about a week into lockdown I got an email from them and I thought at first it was a scam. However they mentioned Roscoe (Wilson, guitarist with Anton & The Colts) and I got a hold of him and he said yes, it was legit. So I got into this correspondence with Brian (Brinkerhoff, Need To Know Records owner) who told me someone had put him onto the Colts album and he had really liked one song in particular, ‘My Favourite Song’. So, he was asking me about the band and after several emails back and forth he offered to make a record with us. We had just finished recording the last Anton & The Colts single Boy, ‘Living For The Weekend’, and Brian mixed it for us and then we started making plans for what was to become “Tomber Sur PRW”.
It took a while for the album to eventually come out.
Most of the songs were written by the middle of 2021 but a couple of things interfered with the process. I had some health issues and then my brother passed away. So the songs had been sitting there for some time. And then the original idea was for me and Roscoe to go to the States to record the songs but with the various lockdowns and travel restrictions that never happened. So we eventually decided that we’d do our parts here, the basic tracks with guitar and guide vocals, and we sent them to Brian and Frank (Swart) who recorded the American musicians and sent the tracks back to us to finish them. It was a strange process, previously I’d mostly recorded with the band in the studio so this was new to me but I think the result was pretty fantastic.
The album cover pictures you sitting in an armchair in the middle of Glasgow’s Buchanan Street. Is it a real picture or photoshopped?
No, it’s a real picture. The chair is an old Chesterfield I bought for £50 on Gumtree and me and my buddy Neil McKenzie dragged it into town and Neil photographed it. It was quite funny as all these Glaswegian kids were hovering around, taking the mickey and shouting out, “Whit are youse doin’ big man?” I wanted the pictures on the sleeve to portray Glasgow to try and emphasise where the inspiration came from.
How and when did you start to perform music?
As a kid I was really into dancing, I used to do my Michael Jackson moves at holiday camps but it wasn’t until my mid-teens that I started to play guitar. My mum’s boss at the time, the manager of a pub, had a guitar but he never played it, it was just gathering dust, and when he saw I was interested in it he gave it to me. And then another guy in the pub, he played guitar and my mum asked him to give me some lessons. In fact, I played my first gig in that pub when I was 17 but it was a bit of a shambles. It was great for the first half, I was playing with a couple of pals but for the second half it was me singing some Bob Dylan songs but I’d had a couple of Jack Daniels and after the first couple of songs I was asked to stop playing as my 17 year old self couldn’t handle them. Eventually, I ended up playing with Roscoe in the Colts but that now seems like a lifetime ago. It’s a shame the band kind of fizzled out, we were playing lots of pub gigs and I thought it was time to try to get into better venues. I mean the pug gigs were good, we were rehearsing a lot and getting really tight but a couple of the band members weren’t too keen to try that so the band just ended.
What artists influenced you when you were starting out?
I liked a lot of the Britpop bands, Oasis and such and Richard Ashcroft was a bit of an inspiration but my favourite band was Ocean Colour Scene, I’ve always listened to them and I’ve seen them over 20 times. There’s one album of theirs, “B-Sides, Seasides And Freerides”, a compilation of B sides from their singles, which I really like. It’s stripped back and I really like the way they did the acoustic sound on the songs. Dylan played a part of course when I started to play.
That’s surprising as there’s not a lot of Americana type music mentioned.
I think it’s been a bit of a natural progression for me. Some of the songs on the first EP Anton & The Colts did, ‘Better The One You Know’ and ‘My Sister Cocaine’ might be considered Americana but to me they’ve got an indie tinge to them. Some of it’s down to Roscoe, the way he was playing and singing, he was into the Rolling Stones. In terms of writing, I tend to write about ups and downs, life’s tribulations and that can lend itself to the Americana trend.
And who do you find yourself listening to these days?
I listen to a lot of Tom Waits, I really love him and I also listen to Dylan a lot. More recently I’ve been enjoying Dylan LeBlanc, he’s got a nice cover of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ which is quite cool. There’s Heather Little who is also on Need To Know Music, she’s got a great record which has a real Americana vibe. In addition, I’ve been listening to a lot of Stones recently as I’m hoping to put on a mini festival next year and as part of it, we’re going to do a Stones tribute with lots of guest artists.
You seem to spend a lot of time playing in Europe. I was particularly struck by your video for ‘It Never Lasts’ which you compiled when you were travelling through the continent in an old Renault Twingo. It captures both the joy of travel and the life of a roving troubadour.
I’ve been going over and playing in Europe for a good few years now, mainly playing in Switzerland where I’ve got some good friends. The concept for that video is just the idea of getting out there to see the world and see what it brings you. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve played all sorts of places, pubs, clubs and proper venues. The enjoyment of just being over there and playing music is great. The Europeans love live music, I don’t know if it’s because I’m a foreigner and maybe a bit exotic to them but it always goes down really well and you can’t buy that sort of experience. As for that old Renault, it was a great car but it’s died now, someone smashed into the back of it at the beginning of the year.
So, any plans for further records or gigs?
I’ve been recording with Roscoe for an album I’m hoping to put out as a follow-up to “Forty’s The New Thirty“ which was a bunch of home recordings I released last year. We’ve already released two songs from the sessions, ‘Always Pining For You’ and ‘Rattle Your Bones’, and I hope to have the album released early next year. I’ll be away on tour from August until November so I’m hoping to get as many recorded as possible before I go so we can stagger a series of single releases. I’ve also got nine songs completed for Need To Know Records and we’ll be releasing those over the next few months so hopefully I’ll have two albums ready for release next year. But for now, I’m looking forward to getting out on tour again so if anyone reading this is in the Netherlands I’m looking to fill some dates at the end of October and I’m also looking for dates in the south of England for the beginning of November.
